Hugo Preuß

Hugo Preuß (Preuss) (28 October 1860 – 9 October 1925) was a German lawyer and liberal politician. He was the author of the draft version of the constitution that was passed by the Weimar National Assembly and came into force in August 1919. He based it on three principles: all political authority belongs
to the people; that the state should be organized on a federal basis; and that the Reich should form a democratic Rechtsstaat (state based in law) within the international community.[1]

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Hugo Preuß was born in Berlin on 28 October 1860 as the only child of Levin Preuß (1820 or 1821-62), a Jewish owner of a lithographic business, and his wife Minna (née Israel, 1826–99). Hugo's father died in 1862 and in 1863 his mother married her husband's brother, Leopold Preuß (1827–1905), a well-off grain merchant. After growing up in the western part of Berlin Hugo Preuß attended university from 1878 at Berlin and Heidelberg, studying Rechts- und Staatswissenschaften (law and governance) but with additional courses on history and philosophy. In May 1883, he passed the 1. Staatsexamen and in November was awarded the Dr. iur. at Göttingen. He stopped working as a legal Referendar in 1886 and instead chose a career as an academic teacher. In 1889, he was habilitated with his publication Gemeinde, Staat, Reich als Gebietskörperschaften and began working as a Privatdozent (lecturer) at the university in Berlin.[2][3] Although the quality of his writings was appreciated by academia, his Jewish religion and democratic-liberal views prevented him from becoming a tenured professor at the conservative Berlin university.[3]

In 1889, Preuß also married Else Liebermann, daughter of Carl Liebermann in Berlin. She was also related to Max Liebermann, the artist, and to Felix Liebermann. Hugo and Else had four sons, one of whom died early. The others were Ernst (*1891), Kurt (*1893) and Jean (Hans, *1901).[3]

In 1895, he became a member of the municipal parliament in Charlottenburg, Berlin. Only in 1906 did Preuß become a full professor, at the Berliner Handelshochschule newly founded by local merchants. He taught there until 1918, when he also was Rektor. His main focus was on constitutional law and on autonomous municipal administration (kommunale Selbstverwaltung). In 1906, the first volume of Die Entwicklung des deutschen Städtewesens was published. From 1910-18 he was honorary city councillor for the FVP.[2] In this capacity he contributed to the project that what would later become the Greater Berlin Act.[3] In 1912, he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Reichstag. In his widely read publication Das deutsche Volk und die Politik of 1915 he forcefully argued for a transformation of the Obrigkeitsstaat into a Volksstaat.[3]

Only a few days after the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II had been announced during the German Revolution of 1918–19, Preuß, in an article published on 14 November 1918, called on the middle-classes to "accept facts" and cooperate in creating the republic. On 15 November, the head of the revolutionary government, Friedrich Ebert of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) appointed Preuß as Staatssekretär des Innern. At the time, the revolutionary Council of the People's Deputies (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) co-existed with the old Imperial bureaucracy. Although the Council served as the cabinet and took the important decisions, it lacked an administrative apparatus and thus made use of the existing structures. Under the old Imperial constitution, the Staatssekretäre had been the heads of the various Ämter, not true ministers but more senior civil servants working for the Reichskanzler (chancellor). Preuß' role thus could be described as head of the "Ministry of the Interior". The Council of the People's Deputies tasked him with preparing a draft for a new republican constitution. In November, Preuß also was a founding member of the new DDP.[2]

The final version of the constitution naturally was different from his original draft in various ways. Preuß' ideas were notably rejected concerning the reorganisation of the individual territories of the Reich—blocked by the new governments of the States. He also was unable to put into practice his idea of a very narrow definition of fundamental rights, limited to the classical freedoms, which he wanted to codify in just three articles of the constitution. Moreover, his attempt to change the nature of the second parliamentary chamber (made up of delegates from the individual State governments) proved impossible. However, some parts of the Weimar Constitution (on the role of parliament, government and Reichspräsident), considered especially problematic in hindsight, were strongly shaped by his ideas. In particular, the powerful position of the head of state, the Reichspräsident, who was given authority to dissolve the Reichstag with no effective limitations and who had considerable emergency powers under Article 48, did not appear to Preuß as a contradiction to the idea of a democratic state. He felt this was a necessary precaution to deal with the danger of a dictatorship of the parliamentary majority and to resolve conflicts between government and parliament by the most democratic method available—through new elections. Preuß also was pessimistic about the ability of the political parties to operate successfully within the new framework: they had no experience in taking on responsibility or with the sort of compromise required for stable government. Under the Empire the governments had operated mostly independently of the parties and the Reichstag majority of the day.[3]

Honour grave of the Preuß family at the Urnenfriedhof in Berlin-Wedding

From 1919 to 1925 Preuß was a member first of the Verfassunggebende Preußische Landesversammlung (1919/20), the equivalent of the National Assembly for the Freistaat Preußen, and then the Preußischer Landtag. He published numerous works on legal and constitutional issues as well as pro-republican writings. He was also active in the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold. Hugo Preuß died in Berlin on 9 October 1925.[2] He is buried at the Urnenfriedhof GerchtsstraßeBerlin-Wedding. Since 1952 the grave has been an Ehrengrab (honour grave) of what is now the State of Berlin.[5]

The Jewish background of the main author of its constitution was one reason why the Weimar Republic was referred to as Judenrepublik ("Jews' Republic") by its detractors on the right.[6]